Despite still being best known as two-thirds of legendary dream-pop project Galaxie 500 Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang have gone on to amass an impressive scope of work as simply Damon & Naomi. In all their years however they haven’t taken the big creative plunge into film soundtracking — something that’s now changed with their latest full-length Fortune.
Blurring the lines between sound and vision the album serves as the soundtrack to Yang’s silent film of the same name essentially what’s described as “a visual poem set to the metronome of a textural score.” On actual record this emerges as a downy-soft bed of folk-tinted recordings at times instrumental but most often equipped with the pair’s tender vocal harmonizing.
In this way Fortune the album very much acts as a stand-alone piece of work showing Damon & Naomi in a stark and personal mood. Softly strummed acoustic guitars are the principal instrument of choice but there are touches of brushing drums keyboard lines and crawling bass. It’s an understated approach to say the least with Damon & Naomi’s soulmate vocals leading the way.
Fortune doesn’t exactly sound in line with modern indie but that’s always been the case with Damon & Naomi and it doesn’t make the record any less touching.
